flashbacks

[deird_lj]

You know how, sometimes, you can hear a bit of music, or smell something, and suddenly for a moment you're back, years earlier, hearing or smelling it for the first time?

Tonight, I'm in Munich.

Everything - absolutely everything, tonight, is reminding me of Germany. Even things that have nothing to do with Germany.

The weather is very cold, and that feels like Germany, and because it's so cold the car heater was on full-blast, which made the car smell like Germany, and my dinner tonight was exactly the right amount of saltiness for Germany, and I was looking at the earrings I made, and getting flashbacks to cross-stitching in Germany, and the music is all like Germany, and the conversation is all like Germany, and...

Suddenly I'm really craving gummi-bears.



It's hard to believe that all happened over ten years ago.

Comments

[padawanspider.livejournal.com]

Last year everything was reminding me of Girl Scout camp until I finally went back there for a week. So I know what you mean :)

but what a privilege to know what Germany smells like! *envy*

[deird1]

I also know what Australia smells like. :)

And New Zealand.

And the Singapore airport.

[immer-am-lesen.livejournal.com]

Haribo macht Kinder froh! :-)
Aldi to the rescue, for the next bout of cravings?

I should bring you some Pumuckl to watch...(if you ever saw that in Germany, of course...)

[deird1]

Aldi is wonderful for things like that...

*needs gummi-bears*

[immer-am-lesen.livejournal.com]

I think it is its reason for existence. Forget store-wide pricing and single-brand promotion and savings and all that...Aldi is just here to satisfy our needs for wonderful German lollies and chocolates. :-)
At least, that's my main reason for going.

[klme.livejournal.com]

Can always come visit Aldi up in chilly FTG!

[debris4spike]

Oh yes, songs, smells etc, they do all take me to places - sometimes happy memories, sometimes not. It's weird how you can suddenly be transported to another spot on the planet and another time ... Maybe that's why I like Spuffy time travel fics so much!!

[deird1]

It really is nice just being back somewhere you really loved...

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Du bist Marcel Proust und ich fordere meine €5.00.

(Haben Sie auch diese Meme in Australien?)

[deird1]

(Nein... *ist verdutzt*)

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Must be only British, then. I think there was a newspaper promotion once, where one of their reporters would wander around town and if you recognised him from his photo in the paper you couls walk up to him and say "You are [name] and I claim my five pounds." This was back in the days when £5.00 was a lot of money.

And so the phrase "You are X and I claim my five pounds" entered the English language. you'd use it in the same context as when Spike said to Adam, "You're like Tony Robbins if he was a big, scary Frankenstein-looking… You're exactly like Tony Robbins."

Do I need to explain the relevance of Marcel Proust? :-)

[deird1]

How many languages do you speak, anyway?!

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Fewer than you might think. I'm good at bluffing, though. :-)

(And I know how to use a German-English dictionary, and I do know a vague smattering of grammar.)

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

Ich bin ein Berliner?

*does not speak German*

Anyhow - I know EXACTLY what you mean. I was going through my things today, cleaning stuff out, and I found all of these letters my first girlfriend wrote to me - which sounds adorable and romantic until you hear that they were all dramatic and fighty and emo and typically female - and it all just felt SO familiar. Especially cause they still kinda smelled like the perfume she put on them. O.O

[deird1]

Awww... *is adorified*


*does not speak German*

Hey, just speak English with a thick German accent - it's pretty much the same thing.

*runs away from all the Germans who will now want me dead*

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

Awww... *is adorified*

*tries to look cute*

Hey, just speak English with a thick German accent - it's pretty much the same thing.

LOL! BEST THING EVAR.

[deird1]

No, but seriously!

"Apple" is "Apfel", "six, seven, eight, nine" is "sechs, sieben, acht, neun"...
It's all exactly the same!

(Which is good, really, or I'd never have managed to learn the language.)

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

Sort of like French - "hot dog" is "le hot-dog", "tee shirt" is "le tee-shirt"...

...but then there's false cognates - where it sounds like a word in English but means something else. Like "attendre"? "To attend", right? WRONG IT MEANS "TO WAIT" aaaagh I hate French. DX

[deird1]

*SO wants to learn French*

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

Ugh. After 5 years of it in school? SO done with it.

But that's the thing about taking foreign languages in school - I can conjugate the fuck out of pretty much any verb you give me, but hell if I can do a basic conversation with someone. Which makes it all fairly useless.

[deird1]

Whereas I'm the opposite - I've never been brilliant at German grammar, but my conversation is fine (3 months talking German full-time will do that to you).

I've been trying to teach myself French for about two years, now. But I'm really not committed enough to it...

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

Ah, mais je suis tres bon avec la facon de conversation! Donc, je te montre!

Je t'aime, et je pense que tu es "le bomb", et je pense aussi que nous devions "besties".

Oooh, I'm SOOO impressive. XD

[deird1]

I... think I can figure out what you're saying... Kinda...

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

Translation:

Oh, but I am very good with conversation! Here, I will show you!

I like you, and I think that you are "the bomb", and I also think that we should be "besties."

:D

[immer-am-lesen.livejournal.com]

Hahaha- That I don't laugh. (Wie mein Bruder es so schön übersetzt...)

I laff now. Zen I vill kill you later on. Ja?

[deird1]

*hides*